Self-Actualization and Women: Rank and Freud Contrasted

Abstract

In their sharply contrasting images of "femininity," Rank and Freud were, at bottom, espousing two radically different concepts of self-actualization. To Freud, women are essentially creatures of instinct, destined by nature to function passively as sex objects and caretakers. Writing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Rank regarded this sex model as patriarchal and reductionistic. It was his position that women as well as men have a drive for self-realization that transcends the socially imposed roles of any specific culture. After his break with Freud, Rank's thinking about women in particular and about human nature in general became increasingly humanistic, existential, and interpersonal. For these and other "heresies" Rank was excommunicated by the Freudian Establishment.